I binged on the written word,
the printed page,
until my sweat was all punctuation,
my perspiration 'postrophes,
my fingernails in long parentheses
holding my hyphenated fingers.

I don't remember the content,
just the discontent
of swallowing words whole,
in giant greedy gulps
like an x-ray barium bender.

There isn't another
compilation I can crunch,
anthology I can annex,
or digest I can digest.
My body is full of letters,
each limb loaded
with ligatures
of printers' type.
My blood-ink content
is off the charts,
crashing through the roof
of the local library.

I smudged every wall I touched,
leaving syllables of Mitchell
and Murakami on each surface
like strange, sooty windows
into worlds I only vaguely recall.

I was trying to cleanse myself,
a typewritten purge,
like a meditative monk
ohming his way to nirvana,
emptying the mind
of printed matter.

A week was all I could take
before my body started to shake,
my mind in withdrawal from writers,
spiraling into a reading recession,
flirting with the giant black ink-hole
trying to suck me in.

My trip to the library
was like a needle between my toes,
pressing the plastic of my card
into the librarian's hand
like passing cash to a pusher.
I am supplied again,
my self-imposed exile is over,
and I can once again
sink into the soft sofa
and not come out
until the last chapter.